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Segregated Witness, also known as SegWit, has locked in on Bitcoin it will be activated soon. This happened after many months of debates on how to scale Bitcoin and after the hard fork by some miners. SegWit will change Bitcoin in many ways. I will mention the most important ones. The blocks will store the same information in a lighter form, this will allow more transactions to be stored in a block and that means faster validation and shorter waiting times assuming the transaction number stays the same. SegWit also fixes transaction malleability which was one of the largest issues of Bitcoin since the very start. Finally, it allows the implementation of Lightning networks, networks that process transactions offline, off-chain. This will remove some of the heavy transaction load from Bitcoin.

I am a big fan of Bitcoin and I’ve been using it since 2012. I was mining for almost 2 years until my electricity was costing me more than the coins I was producing. I’ve worked in few projects that were accepting Bitcoin as payment, processing the transactions and more. During the life of Bitcoin we have seen few bubbles, meaning the price going up parabolic, a lot faster than the previous periods and eventually crashing back. Every time, the price after the crash was higher than the price the rally was starting. I believe we are now in another bubble, prices doubled in about a month and we see big gains daily. This is unsustainable and eventually all markets with these characteristics are correcting themselves. The only questions no one can answer is how high it will go before the crash and when it will happen. In the long term I believe Bitcoin will worth more than what it is now but be careful when buying Bitcoins now. Why buy now when you can buy in few days or weeks with a discount. There is no doubt that Bitcoin has now far more users and investors and that is why the price is so high (over $2200) but that doesn’t mean it can continue playing the greater fool game forever.

The price of one bitcoin (1135) is very close to the price of one ounce of gold (1165). If Bitcoin continue this trend it will soon reach parity with gold and even surpass it. The price of Bitcoin continue its uptrend while the value of gold decreased in the last months. This shows that the dynamics are changing and people prefer the digital gold instead of the traditional one. While writing the post the price went from 1120 to 1135, I will try to post it before change again and make me re-edit!

Security researchers found a way to gain remote access to Tesla cars and execute some actions. Some actions like move the mirrors or open the trunk are not so scary but some other actions like access to the brakes is very scary. Don’t think that those actions require the hacker to be near the car, access to the brakes can be done remotely, kilometers away from the car. Keen security lab researches created a video that demonstrate some actions they can perform on Tesla cars. I hope those security holes to be patched soon.

Bitcoin price rally is due to the weakening Chinese Yuan. They turn into Bitcoin since it is more stable and because of that demand, Bitcoin price is moving upwards. The demand is estimated to continue and the price to be soon above $500. This happens also with other countries and currencies but it didn’t have this effect in Bitcoin price. As said before, the price will be affected also by the halving that will happen in less than 2 months. The price is estimated to reach $800 by the end of the year.

Japan officially accepted Bitcoin, and other digital currencies, as money. In particular, Japan recognizes them as having function similar to money. The specific legislation was at works for weeks and it is finally accepted. In addition, payments can be made directly to Bitcoin without the need of converting them to fiat currency. Banks will start investing in Bitcoin as assets for asset management and future gains.

Ransomwares are becoming very common since (apparently) only a small percentage is taking backups. Most people and organizations have valuable data laying in their hard drives without taking any backups. Creators of ransomwares are aware of this and they encrypt their files asking for money to provide them the key to unlock their files. In many cases, people and organizations are paying the ransom, creators make profit and they create more, more difficult to decrypt ransomwares. In this post we will provide the solution, how to encrypt some of the ransomwares, if you are the victim of those ransomware then you are luckier than others.

Security researches discovered a new Chrome zero-day exploit that can be used to hack any Android phone. Even the latest version has the vulnerability in the JavaScript v8 engine of the Chrome browser of the Android operating system. The browser comes pre-installed on almost all Android smartphones. All the hackers have to do is lure their victims to a malicious website. Exploiting that vulnerability, the website can gain administrative rights and install any malware application which will give them full access to the phone. The exploit was demonstrated at the PacSec conference in Tokyo 2015.

I’ve created many posts to let the readers know which web browser is the best and most, if not all, of the times was Firefox. According to IT Pro, Firefox is still the best web browser out there and Mozilla made many changes since the last time. The comparison was done one month ago so it is up to date. I want to mention that the differences between the browsers are not big and it is a matter of preference. The main reason of my choice (Firefox) is the enhanced security and privacy, it proved it to me many times. Internet Explorer and Chrome auto accept any kind of certificate where Firefox doesn’t. Another reason is its add-ons, mostly because I hate ads so I want to block them. Google circumvented AdBlock Plus, one of the most popular ad blockers, to allow ads. The big plus of Firefox is that it is developed by Mozilla, a non-profit organization, and they have the user as priority and not the shareholders.

So far we’ve heard about Solid State Drives (SSD) which are much faster than normal drives. Now, researches are looking for Solid State Electrolytes (SSE) which will help us have batteries that will last much longer. Today’s batteries are based on Liquid-State Electrolytes and they have their limitations. Researches from MIT and Samsung have developed a new material which can be used in future batteries to increase their storage, their life and make them safer. I would love to have a battery that lasts for a week (at least) with a single charge.